Under Hedda’s Hat

The most startling divorce of the season is that of Dinah Shore and George Montgomery. Ziva Rodann, who was in the picture George made in the Philippines, still declares there was nothing between them. So does Diane McBain. Neither George nor Dinah are talking. That great big place they built is going to be very lonely for Dinah—and she’s a girl who likes to have a man around the house. I’ll bet she’s sorry now that she sold their old home to Nanette Fabray. It was just the right size for her present needs.

Liz Taylor’s shopping for a home in Switzerland which means she and Eddie Fisher won’t be around Hollywood for a long time. The operation Liz had to remove that throat scar wasn’t successful. It remains plainly visible and she does nothing to cover it. “It’s my badge of life,” she says. “I wear it with pride.” Our gal Liz has always been the informal type. During a White House visit once she secretly kicked off her shoes. When she tried to retrieve them for photographs, she found they had landed under a chair occupied by Mrs. Harry Truman.

When Frank Sinatra went to Australia, Dorothy Provine and Gloria and Mike Romanoff went with him. He was a big hit over there as he always is. They saw Vivien Leigh in “Camille” and said she had her dressing room plastered with pictures of Sir Laurence Olivier.

Dorothy couldn’t tour the Orient with her three pals, she had to return to her studio. The others had a ball in Hong Kong with Mr. Ho, who is a partner of Bill Holden. (They are co-owners of an all-glass apartment house.) Frankie and the Romanoffs also met the Maharajah of Jawore in Thailand. He took them through his private zoo. On the trip home Frankie stopped off in Tokyo to pick up Doug McClure’s three- and-a-half-year-old daughter

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Tane so she could come to Hollywood for her dad’s (above) wedding to Barbara Luna. Only a couple of weeks later Frankie announced to the world he’ll soon marry Juliet Prowse.

Marlon Brando didn’t win any friends on the “Mutiny on the Bounty” set. And this goes for execs as well as others. But take it from me, if the movie ever gets finished, and if it ever makes a profit, everyone will love him again—just wait and see!

Shirley MacLaine waited until her husband Steve Parker was out of the country before those “nude” pictures of her were shown in a national magazine. Asked why she posed, Shirley said, “I kept looking at those old stars on tiger rugs looking into the camera with big innocent eyes. They were so silly I just had to do a spoof on them.”

Feuer and Martin are searching the world to find a girl who can play all the scenes in Patrick Dennis’ new book “Little Me” on stage. They should get Shirl. She can act the role and she has the luscious figure for it.

Sharon Hugueny’s eyes have taken on a sadness that was absent when I first interviewed her eighteen months ago. Her marriage to Bob Evans was a disaster for this vivacious girl. She was sixteen when she got a call from Bob asking her for lunch. She explained she didn’t lunch with strangers. He called again next morning and she consented to go if she could take along her guardian. After lunch he drove her to an appointment in Beverly Hills, but on the way he took a detour to a lovely home which she said “looked like a little castle. He was anxious to know how I liked it,” said Sharon afterwards.

He kept calling, and two days later at a big party a strange man came up to her and asked her to stand up. She did. “He looked me up and down, then turned to Bob and said ‘She looks in perfect physical condition.’ It was his doctor.”

That night he proposed. Less than a month later they were married, and for twenty-four hours afterwards she was in a daze. Five months later they divorced. She’s not yet eighteen.

Sharon’s living alone in a Valley apartment and is trying very hard to forget the past and get on with her career.

When Ty Hardin spoke unwisely and loudly to the press that he and Ann-Margret weren’t seeing so much of each other because she was becoming serious, Ann-Margret just laughed. She still sees Ty occasionally, but Frankie Avalon cut him out. She swears she won’t become serious about anyone for a long time because she wants to give her parents a taste of the good life she’s enjoying these days, yet her romance with the young Mr. Avalon looks more serious every day.

Reports from Rome are rampant that Linda Christian will wed Edmond Purdom. Ho hum!!

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Had a nice long chat with David Susskind. Here’s a young man with a flair for making news—on and off the TV screen.

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Zsa Zsa Gabor’s impatience landed her in the hospital. She couldn’t wait for the moving men, so she tried to move herself out of sister Eva’s house and into an apartment. She ended up flat on her back with a hemorrhage and pneumonia. When I called her at the hospital, she assured me she was dying. But leave it to Zsa Zsa, she was “dying” in style—with “three beautiful doctors” in attendance. When I asked one of her doctors why she needed three of ’em, he laughed, “We each hold her hand for a few minutes.” Luckily, she recovered for the party to announce her engagement to Bob Straile. Kim Novak was among the guests.

Pamela Tiffin became a best-dressed girl the hard way—she makes her own clothes. She admits sewing takes time, effort and practice, but heartily recommends it for every woman.

Fabian is popular with the young Hollywood starlets but the girl he’s jealous of is a pretty Philadelphia secretary named Barbara Magnelius. When he visited home last time he dated her several times. When he’s out here, he phones her often to see if any other fellow is making time.

Joan Cohn and Laurence Harvey still claim their torrid romance won’t wind up at the altar. Anyway, so they say.

Mitzi Gaynor’s second appearance at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas proved again how popular she is. Her salary soared to $40,000 a week, and as a bonus the hotel gave her two percent of the house receipts. She’s playing now in Miami Beach and getting $50,000 per. Mitzi travels with eleven people—the four boys who do the act with her, her personal orchestra leader, hairdresser, maid, special drummer, wardrobe woman, a press agent and, of course, her husband Jack Bean.

Nobody can figure out what goes with Gardner McKay and Dolores Hawkins. She’s in Paris at this writing on a modeling job. Gardner phones her several times a week—but I hear Greta Chi is always nearby to tug at his sleeve and signal that he’s talking too long. He spends his weekends making a motion picture—a camera dramatization of a Rupert Brooke poem—but says he’ll get someone else to do the narration. His famous dog Pussy Cat hogs the cameras so much at the Sports Arena when Gardner is there with his basketball team, 20th finally broke down and gave the dog a role in “Adventures In Paradise.”

That mellow masculine voice answering France Nuyen’s phone so often belongs to Marc Marno. He and France are so in love! He was in “A Majority of One” and since she met him France, who’s had some ups and downs where romance is concerned, goes around looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. David Hedison, not usually demonstrative in public thought he saw his pal Ina Balin at La Scala one night, so he crept up behind her and gave her a quick kiss. It turned out to be Madlyn Rhue and she was such a good sport about it, they’re steady dating now.

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Maybe the reason Hope Lange is taking Glenn Ford’s switch to Connie Stevens so big is that Stephen Boyd is back in town.

Frank Sinatra and Desi Arnaz have patched up their old feud. Frank got upset because so many Italians were being portrayed as gangsters on “The Untouchables” and told Desi, “The boys don’t like it.” Desi had a few words of his own to say, so Frank packed up and took his business from Desilu to the Goldwyn Studio. That move cost Arnaz about two million bucks. But what’s two million to either of those two.

June Lockhart and John Lindsay bought Dore Schary’s home and told me they had a heck of a time getting the Adlai Stevenson stickers off the windows.

Shelley Winters is running true to form again. When she fell in love with Vittorio Gassman she pushed him right to the top. When he got there he looked elsewhere for love. Now she’s doing the same thing for Alec Viespi. He’s getting more jobs than he can fill. Shelley should have married a man who’d have given her six children. She always has to mother people.

Rhonda Fleming’s done it again—divorced her third husband Lang Jeffries after a marriage of sixteen months and sixteen days. “He’s been guilty of undisclosed acts of cruelty,” she told the judge.

Maureen O’Hara and her daughter Bronwyn became do-it-yourselfers at their Soma Canyon home which was partially destroyed by the big fire. “We’re good with hammers and pick and shovel and have plenty of opportunity to exercise our talents,” says the star. “It’s harder to get a carpenter or a cleanup man these days than to find a good acting role.”

Ava Gardner hasn’t been before a camera for two years, but you’ll be seeing her on the screen soon. She’s all set to do a picture in Italy. Designer Orry-Kelly handed Ava quite a bouquet when he said, “She had the most perfect figure I’ve ever dressed.” And he’s one designer who’s dressed ’em all. Ava’s new co-star will be Louis Jourdan.

 

That’s all the news under my hat now. See you next month.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE MARCH 1962